Re "CIA denies Senate spying claim," March 12 Anyone who fails to appreciate the supreme irony of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) righteous indignation over the CIA's alleged spying on and undermining of the Senate Intelligence Committee (of which Feinstein is chair) has not been paying attention. For years, she has been one of the intelligence community's most steadfast champions, deflecting criticism of the surveillance state, attacking whistle-blowers and justifying nearly every abuse.

Re "The shame of the Boy Scouts," Editorial, Oct. 10 It is unfortunate that your excellent editorial concerning the discovery of a longtime coverup of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America did not find room to mention the fact that a little more than a decade ago, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that organization's right to legally discriminate against gays by refusing them membership. This Boy Scouts scenario sounds way too much like the lengthy hypocritical and ignominious history of a similar repeated coverup within the Roman Catholic Church.

JERUSALEM - -Blue seas, red mountains and green rockets set the stage for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday as he launched a fierce critique of the international community, which he accused of hypocrisy regarding Iran and a double standard toward Israel. The country's top political and military ranks, as well as international diplomats and media, traveled to Israel's southernmost city of Eilat for the display of the weapons seized from the Klos-C, a Panamanian-registered ship intercepted by Israel's navy near Sudan last week.

Re "Europe seeks a meeting on spying," Oct. 26 The U.S. does not deny having spied on leaders of its closest allies. There seems to be no public uproar at this fiasco that directly damages U.S. interests, nor does there seems to be a presidential intent of dismissing the heads of the agencies responsible for such a breach of trust. On the contrary, officialdom appears rather smug, projecting the aura that they should have gotten away with it. Now that the U.S. has been exposed snooping on trusted partners, perhaps the president should grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard, convicted of transmitting to Israel U.S. intelligence.

Re "CIA denies Senate spying claim," March 12 Anyone who fails to appreciate the supreme irony of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) righteous indignation over the CIA's alleged spying on and undermining of the Senate Intelligence Committee (of which Feinstein is chair) has not been paying attention. For years, she has been one of the intelligence community's most steadfast champions, deflecting criticism of the surveillance state, attacking whistle-blowers and justifying nearly every abuse.

Re "U.S. drone death toll raised," May 23 I have no doubt that if they could be asked, 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki and his father Anwar, Samir Khan and Jude Kenan Mohammad would each gladly prefer waterboarding to President Obama's assassination by drone without due process of law. Our Constitution protects all U.S. citizens, whether at home or abroad. The silence of the left at a time when our government kills Americans without due process of law is horrifying. The hypocrisy of elitism has never been more clear.

Re "Right sees a prosecution run amok," March 8 I agree with the left's assessment that the right is being hypocritical, if not downright comical, by deeming perjury a serious offense worthy of impeachment of a president but simply a technicality in the context of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. I'll wait to see how much hypocrisy the left will partake in when President Bush pardons Libby the same way Clinton pardoned his political cronies. HIRBOD RASHIDI Los Angeles

I can't imagine anyone but a conservative think tank pundit coming out of the new film "The Age of Innocence" believing that it's our civilized duty to sacrifice our deepest desires in order to perpetuate social hypocrisy. Does James P. Pinkerton (Column Right, Sept. 30) really need it spelled out that "The Age of Innocence" is about the tragedy of repression and hypocrisy, not a celebration of it? I guess he does. At the end of the novel (and film) Newland Archer is a broken man, a victim not just of his own ambivalences but of a society terrified of honest feeling.

More than 15 years after fabricating some 42 articles for the New Republic, Rolling Stone and other magazines, Stephen Glass was back in the news this week. On Monday, the California Supreme Court ruled that Glass, 41, does not have the moral character "critical to the practice of law. " He has been trying for a decade to overcome that hurdle. He's certainly qualified otherwise. Glass graduated from Georgetown Law School in 2000, passed bar exams in New York and California, and has worked for years as a paralegal at a Beverly Hills firm.

I call it the swimming pool at the end of time. Roots were chopped, earth scraped, white pipes snaked like the insides of a rocket ship, rebar netted down before the concrete was poured and the tap turned on, filling the pool - which is in my backyard - with water from mountain snowmelt via the Colorado River, the Central Arizona Project and fossil water from the local aquifer. If there's one thing a nature writer shouldn't do, it's fill a big hole with water in the arid Southwest.

Re "Europe seeks a meeting on spying," Oct. 26 The U.S. does not deny having spied on leaders of its closest allies. There seems to be no public uproar at this fiasco that directly damages U.S. interests, nor does there seems to be a presidential intent of dismissing the heads of the agencies responsible for such a breach of trust. On the contrary, officialdom appears rather smug, projecting the aura that they should have gotten away with it. Now that the U.S. has been exposed snooping on trusted partners, perhaps the president should grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard, convicted of transmitting to Israel U.S. intelligence.

JERUSALEM -- Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israel's delegation to leave the room during this week's U.N. speech by Iran's president, he was listening and was not happy with what he heard. "As expected, this was a cynical speech that was full of hypocrisy," Netanyahu said in a statement Wednesday. Netanyahu rejected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's comments describing Iran's controversial nuclear program as an effort aimed at civilian purposes.

Re "Justices rein in Voting Rights Act," June 26 The decision to effectively invalidate the Voting Rights Act is the Roberts court's most hypocritical ruling. The Supreme Court's conservative justices have said that nine unelected judges should not overrule the voters' elected representatives unless the Constitution demands it. Here, the court threw out a 98-0 Senate vote in 2006 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, thousands of pages of congressional voting rights research and almost 50 years of effective legislation.

Re "U.S. drone death toll raised," May 23 I have no doubt that if they could be asked, 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki and his father Anwar, Samir Khan and Jude Kenan Mohammad would each gladly prefer waterboarding to President Obama's assassination by drone without due process of law. Our Constitution protects all U.S. citizens, whether at home or abroad. The silence of the left at a time when our government kills Americans without due process of law is horrifying. The hypocrisy of elitism has never been more clear.

JERUSALEM - -Blue seas, red mountains and green rockets set the stage for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday as he launched a fierce critique of the international community, which he accused of hypocrisy regarding Iran and a double standard toward Israel. The country's top political and military ranks, as well as international diplomats and media, traveled to Israel's southernmost city of Eilat for the display of the weapons seized from the Klos-C, a Panamanian-registered ship intercepted by Israel's navy near Sudan last week.

Re "Congress, rethink that wall," Opinion, April 29 Former Mexican President Vicente Fox has spent much of his political career trying to convince us that shipping the poor from Mexico to the United States is a good thing. I wonder what would have happened if he had spent his six-year presidency improving the Mexican economy so that his citizens did not feel the need to flee their country. Additionally, it is hypocritical to condemn our security measures while Mexico stations law enforcement and military personnel on its southern border to prevent illegal immigration from Central and South America.

Re "The shame of the Boy Scouts," Editorial, Oct. 10 It is unfortunate that your excellent editorial concerning the discovery of a longtime coverup of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America did not find room to mention the fact that a little more than a decade ago, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that organization's right to legally discriminate against gays by refusing them membership. This Boy Scouts scenario sounds way too much like the lengthy hypocritical and ignominious history of a similar repeated coverup within the Roman Catholic Church.